Friday, April 12, 2013

Writers on the River in May

I'm so excited to be giving the first ever workshop for Writers on the River in Corvallis, Oregon! It's already sold out, but if you're interested in attending, contact these great people and get your name on the waiting list.

On May 20th, the Monday before the workshop, I'll be giving a presentation, "The Story and the Question," which is open to the public:

In my workshop on the 25th, I’ll be
talking about where and how to end a story or novel, so it only seems right
that I first speak a little about beginnings. When you sit down to write, where
do you begin? With character? Voice? Plot? Setting?

How much do you need to know – if anything – before
you start committing those words to paper? Should you have a theme? Adopt (or
already know?!) a particular style? Can you figure out some of this stuff along
the way?

I’m going to argue that you begin with a question
that you know you’ll never be able to answer. A question that means enough to
you that you’re willing to fumble towards it for 350 pages. Nabokov has a
fancypants description for this: “the subliminal coordinates with which to
focus the plot.” Jim Shepard calls it “the question to which the novel keeps
obsessively returning.” Call it whatever you want, but this is the question you
are writing the book to figure out. The question is the eternal engine. Once
you know your question, you are ready to begin.

This presentation will last roughly one hour and
will move fluidly between an informal lecture and audience Q & A. We will
likely look at several examples of these novel-generating questions and
consider possibilities for our own.

Hibernate: Stories

Bone Worship, a Novel

About Me

Elizabeth Eslami is the author of the story collection, Hibernate, for which she was awarded the 2013 Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction, and the novel Bone Worship (Pegasus, 2010). Her writing has appeared most recently in The Sun and Witness, and her work is featured in the anthologies Tremors: New Fiction By Iranian American Writers and Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema. She is the Hampton and Esther Boswell Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University. For more information, please visit her website at www.elizabetheslami.com